Missives From The Royal Palace: Princess Farhana's thoughts on dancers and dancing; costuming, make up, reviews,vignettes and oh yeah....glitter!

Friday, May 9, 2014

DANCING FOR OUR MANY MOTHERS

Ouled Nayl women, Algeria

Whether your mother
is biological, someone who adopted you, or
a mother within the realm of dance, use this time to honor her.

I watched my beautiful
friend Alli Ruth, a belly dancer from Finland, as she performed. She’d grown up in
Southern California, and was trained by the late, great Diane Webber, a belly
dance pioneer who influenced hundreds of dancers. Diane’s troupe,
Perfumes Of Araby, begat many strong solo performers who taught and influenced
many others. Her classes at Every Woman’s Village in the San Fernando Valley of
Los Angeles spawned many accomplished dancers, in the LA area and beyond, including
Jillina.

But back to my pal Alli
Ruth: in the middle of her show, the woman sitting next to me burst into
tears. She clutched at my arm and sniffled,

“I’m so sorry… but I see
Diane in her dancing!”

It was a profound moment;
I’m getting goose bumps right now just writing about it.

People have told me that
they can see my teachers in my
dancing, and I have also been told that students of mine reflect my own
movements and essence. While I was always proud of both statements, the
point was never quite really driven
home to me, until the other night…and then I began to think in an even broader
scope.

In the very act of dancing,
we are honoring our forebears in dance. Belly dancing has been handed down from
mother to daughter, from teacher to pupil through many millennia and hundreds
of generations. It is a song of the soul, and a celebration of beauty,
femininity, power, and strength.

In the very act of dancing, we are honoring women
past and present, all over the world.

The women who gave birth to
our physical beings, and/or raised us throughout our childhoodsare obviously very special… but there are so
many other women to pay homage to; the women with no blood ties who selflessly
gave birth to us in different ways.

Our Dance Mothers
nurtured us and raised us in art and beauty. They helped us through our baby
steps to grow into strong performers, sharing our triumphs and our woes,
advising us, seeing us through the ruts and rough periods. They understood our
discouragement, our passions and helped us fulfill our goals.

No matter what style of
dancing you perform, take a moment to think of all those who came before
you, those who pioneered the way for us, those who taught our
teachers.

Give silent respect and
love to the myriad women whom we never even knew in our lifetimes, women
from your country and many other
countries all over the globe who all have a hand in what we are doing today:
practicing the gift of dance that we might sometimes take for granted,
grumbling in a class or competing in an audition for a gig.

On Mothers Day let’s
dance… let’s dance for the mothers, grandmothers , great grandmothers and great
great grandmothers of our dance. Let’s celebrate the lives of Biblical
temptresses, harem slaves, dirt-poor villagers, the women in tiny dark
apartments in Cairo in the 1970’s, the Romany women of the defunct Sulukule
ghetto in Istanbul. Let’s dance for Mata Hari, Gypsy Rose Lee, Ruth St. Denis,
Ginger Rogers, Isadora Duncan, and the nameless women ofevery chorus linethat ever existed.

Let’s dance
for women of the stage and silver screen who dared to dance when
they were forbidden to.

Let’s dance for the women
who supported their entire families by dancing, even if it meant they were
shamed by society…and the very families
they supported!

Let’s dance for women
in Beirut when the bombs fell, for the women and girls of blood-torn Syria, for
the veiled women who can’t drive in Saudi Arabia, and for all thefemale children in Afghanistan who were
denied education. Let’s dance for Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who
crusaded for women’s rights in the Swat Valley, who was shot in the head by the
Taliban.

Let’s dance for the 276 girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria.

Let’s dance for all the women whom we will
never even know in our lifetimes…

Let’s honor our mothers by dancing for those who
can’t, and then let’s all close our eyes and hear their voices.

#

This post was originally published in
May 2013

#BRINGBACKOURGIRLS

The Belly Dance Handbook: A Companion
For The Serious Dancer is available on
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